Tag Archives: Asia

We’ve all seen the “Before and After Photoshop” versions of photographs, displaying the ways in which various media distort our perception of ideal beauty. But what would these images look like in other countries? With her series Before & After,Esther Honig, a radio journalist based out of Kansas City, asked just that. With the help of Fiverr, a website for freelancers, she got in touch with artists from forty different countries; emailing each a self-portrait, she wrote, “Hi, my name is Esther Honig. Make me look beautiful.” When they did not understand the assignment, she simply told them to make her look like the most popular fashion models.

When artists from twenty-seven countries replied, she was astonished with the results. Some edits were so dramatic that she yelped aloud; others, like the image from Morocco, in which she was given a hijab, stole her breath. Some cultures favor a bare face where others apply makeup. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the work is the overwhelming presence of Western feminine ideals: pale white skin, pink cheeks, a dainty nose, and wide eyes contoured with trimmed brows.

In the end, the series expresses the extend to which often oppressive beauty ideals are meaningless; where a woman is declared beautiful in one culture, she might be plain in another. Yet for all women, regardless of ethnicity and background, the pressure to be beautiful remains, propagated by the whims of the contemporary media. Writes Honig, “Photoshop allows us to achieve our unobtainable standards of beauty, but when we compare those standards on a global scale, achieving the ideal remains all the more illusive.” (via Buzzfeed)

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Some pretty stark imagery from “Martyred Saints”, a series of photographs by Toby de Silva:

“…the Saints are displayed in a cathedral in Eastern Germany close to the Czech border and were acquired in the 17th century when there was a big trade in relics. They are said to be the remains of Martyred saints that were stored in the catacombs of Rome before being removed and traded. They were reassembled and dressed in their fine regalia and displayed in ornate cabinets.”

It must’ve been pretty dark in the “catacombs of Rome”. The photos are also fairly dark, not much to hold onto by way of background. But the blackness in each photo is balanced by Silva’s bright, clear lighting of his subjects and their jewels. (via)